The Human Cost Of The War In Gaza

Diane Rehm: On My Mind

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🗓️ 29 February 2024

⏱️ 39 minutes

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Summary

As the conflict between Israel and Hamas rages on, the level of human suffering in the Gaza Strip has come into clearer focus.

The death toll in Gaza surpassed 30,000 this week, according to the Gazan health ministry. The United Nations estimates that 2 million Palestinians in the territory have been internally displaced by war. New reports say nearly all of the 2.3 million people in the enclave face crisis levels of food insecurity. And at least one quarter of the population is one step away from famine.

Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib is a U.S. citizen from Gaza who has lost 31 family members so far in the conflict. He is also a Middle East analyst whose writing has appeared in Foreign Policy, The Atlantic, and the Washington Post. He joined Diane on this week’s episode of On My Mind to share his family’s story — and what it says about the broader humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Support for Diane Reims on my mind comes from St.C. Shakespeare Theater Company, presenting The Lehman Trilogy,
0:06.3	a play that examines the double-edged sword of capitalism.
0:09.4	Now playing for a limited time at Harmon Hall.
0:12.4	Tickets at Shakespeare Theater.org. It's Diane. On my mind, the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. The death toll in Gaza is 30,000 this week.
0:31.2	The United Nations estimates 2 million Palestinians in the territory have been
0:37.9	internally displaced by war and new reports say nearly all of the 2.3 million people in Gaza face crisis levels of food
0:50.0	insecurity, at least a quarter of the population, is just one step away from famine.
0:59.3	Layers upon layers of death and misery and loss with no end in sight.
1:06.0	Ahmed Fuhad Al-Hati is a U.S. citizen from Gaza and a Middle East analyst whose writing has appeared in foreign policy, the
1:17.8	Atlantic, and the Washington Post. He joined me Tuesday morning to talk about conditions in Gaza and what the
1:26.8	global community must do to address them. First of all, tell me a little about your background, where you grew up. I know it was
1:38.1	God's a city. When did you come here?
1:42.9	Well, thanks for the conversation.
1:44.7	I grew up a significant amount of my life in Gaza City,
1:49.3	but I was actually born and lived a small part of my life
1:52.0	in Saudi Arabia. Our family was moving
1:54.1	back and forth between the two places. My dad was a physician working in Saudi Arabia,
2:00.0	as is the case with a lot of people from Gaza or Palestine, you know, the engineers, the nurses, the doctors, the teachers, they work in other Arab countries, they build up a little nest for themselves and then they move back permanently to their
2:16.0	homeland and hope to build a house and a future for their family.
2:21.3	But we went back and forth in the 90s and then we permanently moved to Gaza three months
2:27.6	before the second Intifada.
2:29.1	So that was June 2000, and the Second Intifada began on September 28th of 2000 and I was in the sixth grade at the time and I would unfortunately go on to experience a lot of the challenges and the horrors and the suffering and the bombing and the death and
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